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Since 2016, the “Digital in NRW” Competence Centre has been supporting SMEs in the manufacturing industry in designing their individual digital transformation. With an Industry 4.0 maturity assessment, we define the status quo of SMEs, derive SME-specific measures from this, develop a digitalization roadmap and accompany the SME transformation. This paper presents the results of the four-year SME support. By analyzing the results of all maturity assessments, potential analysis and design workshops, we present the most frequent and most effective measures for a successful digital transformation of SMEs. The result of the paper is an action guideline for SMEs to initiate their own digital transformation based on formalized experience.
The aim of the related research project eCloud is to enable small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to implement flexible energy management without in-depth energy knowledge and with little distraction from day-to-day business, which is prepared for current and future challenges in the field of energy use. The overall result is a validated prototype for a plug and automate capable (i.e. without implementation effort) operational energy management, which can be successively set up in SMEs based on a cloud platform. Through its gradual and modular implementation, energy management meets the individual needs of each company and contributes to energy system transformation and climate protection by reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25%. In total, three expansion stages are available with the levels of monitoring, load management and grid usage, which consist of various Software as a Service (SaaS) modules from the cloud that can be retrieved as required. Thus, the user only needs a minimal hardware intervention in his production and saves a complex IT infrastructure. The methodology developed has been successfully applied by two user companies so far. This proves the effectiveness of the method.
Management of information and the IT systems it is stored in becomes a crucial capability for the industry. However, companies are struggling with the management of the various requirements and frequent changes of technology. Thus, IT complexity has become a major challenge for companies. At the same time, especially manufacturing companies are striving to implement Industrie 4.0 concepts. Many of these even have developed an Industrie 4.0 roadmap including various projects to change the company. Companies can develop such roadmaps by applying the Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index that gives a broad view on necessary capabilities for Industrie 4.0.
In our research, we analyzed data sets from over 10 manufacturing companies that have performed an Industrie 4.0 maturity assessment. Our hypothesis was that IT complexity challenges are hindering the implementation of Industrie 4.0 roadmaps significantly. We could prove this hypothesis at least for the companies analyzed and give insights on the specific challenges. Based on our analysis, we conclude our article by giving concrete recommendations on how to tackle IT complexity.
Smartification and digital refinement of products to enable the design of smart ones is a pivotal challenge in the manufacturing industry. Companies fail to design smart products due to missing knowledge of digital technologies and their integral part in product development processes. This paper presents a methodology that enables the derivation of digital functions for smart products through selected cases in manufacturing usage. We develop a morphology that consists of digital functions for smartification. In this context, we explained and derived characteristics by a set of examples regarding smart products in the manufacturing industry. Our methodology reduces the time spent initiating a development project with the focus on smartification.
Numerous traditional, agile and hybrid development approaches have been proposed for the development of CPS. As the choice of development process is crucial to the success of development projects, it has become a major challenge to identify the best-suited process. This paper introduces a methodology for identifying the best-suited CPS development process, based on the individual boundary conditions for a certain development project within a company. The authors used a set of eight indicators to assess a CPS-development project. The results of the assessment were matched with CPS-development approaches. Based on the matching results a best-suited development process was selected. The application is shown for a use case in the German manufacturing industry. The developed method aims to reduce the risk of project failure due to the wrong choice of development process.
It is crucial today that economies harness renewable energies and integrate them into the existing grid. Conventionally, energy has been generated based on forecasts of peak and low demands. Renewable energy can neither be produced on demand nor stored efficiently. Thus, the aim of this paper is to evaluate Deep Learning-based forecasts of energy consumption to align energy consumption with renewable energy production. Using a dataset from a use-case related to landfill leachate management, multiple prediction models were used to forecast energy demand.The results were validated based on the same dataset from the recycling industry. Shallow models showed the lowest Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), significantly outperforming a persistence baseline for both, long-term (30 days), mid-term (7 days) and short-term (1 day) forecasts. A potential decrease of up to 23% in peak energy demand was found that could lead to a reduction of 3,091 kg in CO2-emissions per year. Our approach requires low finanacial investments for energy-management hardware, making it suitable for usage in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs).
Assessment of IS Integration Efforts to Implement the Internet of Production Reference Architecture
(2018)
As part of a collaborative network, manufacturing companies are required to be agile and accelerate their decision making. To do so, a high amount of data is available and needs to be utilized. To enable this from a company internal information system perspective, the Internet of Production (IoP) describes a future information system (IS) architecture. Core element of the IoP is a digital platform building the basis for a network of cognitive systems. To implement and continuously further develop the IoP, manufacturing companies need to make architecture-related decisions concerning the accessibility of data, the processing of the data as well as the visualization of the information. The goal of this research is the development of a decision-support methodology to make those decisions, taking under consideration the evaluated IS integration effort. Therefore, this paper describes the allocation of IS functions and identifies the effort drivers for the respective IS integration by analyzing the integration possibilities. Conclusively this approach will be validated in a case study.
The manufacturing industry has to exploit trends like “Industrie 4.0” and digitization not only to design production more efficiently, but also to create and develop new and innovative business models. New business models ensure that even SMEs are able to open up new markets and canvass new customers. This means that in order to stay competitive, SMEs must transform their existing business models.
The creation of new business models require smart products. The required data base for new business models cannot be provided by SMEs alone, whereas smart products are able to provide a foundation, given the creation of smart data and smart services they enable. These services then expand functions and functionality of smart products and define new business models.
However, the development of smart products by small and medium-sized enterprises is still lined with obstacles. Regarding the product development process the inclusion of smart products means that new and SME-unknown domains diffuse during the process. Although there are many models regarding this process there appears to be a substantial lack of taking into account the competencies enabled by the implementation of digital technologies. Hence, several SME-supporting approaches fail to address the two major challenges these enterprises are faced with. This paper generally describes valid objectives containing relevant stakeholders and their allocation to the phases of the product life cycle.
Within each objective the potential benefit for customers and producers is analyzed. The model given in this paper helps SMEs in defining the initiation of a product development project more precisely and hence also eases project scoping and targeting for the smartification of an already existing product.
Due to the drastically increasing amount of data, decision making in companies heavily relies on having the right data available. Also because of an increasing complexity of structures and processes, quick and precise flows of information become more important.
This paper introduces a new approach for modelling information flows, creating a basis for an efficient information management. It can be used to structure the information requirements and identify gaps within the information processing.
To display its benefits, the proposed Information Logistics Notation (ILN) is applied to the information logistics of todays and future energy market and grid stability management, both processes of increasing complexity.
Nowadays, the market for information and communication technologies used for IOT-applications grows daily. Since companies need technologies to transform their business processes corresponding to the digital revolution, they need to know which technologies are available, and fit the best for their use case. Their inertial issue is the lacking overview of technologies suitable to connect their production or logistics. Hence, this paper presents a methodology to select technologies (and combinations) based on their functions. It differentiates between information and communication technologies, digital technologies and connecting technologies by the physical function and its role in a cyber-physical system. Depending on the use case, the applicability of every technology varies. Due to that reason, the paper illustrates a ranked qualification of the technologies for typical use cases, focussing tracking and tracing issues in the intralogistics of producing companies. The evaluation is performed upon a literature research, a market study to identify suitable technologies, and various expert interviews to assess the applicability of the technologies.